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The dreaded poopy diaper is enough to push some moms into the subculture of “elimination communication.”

They are the potty whisperers: Parents who learn to sense the moments before a pee or poo so they can hold their child over a toilet to do their baby business there.

“I don’t know why anybody would watch their kid poop in their pants when they could put them on the potty. I don’t care how old they are,” said Windsor resident, Sara Fontaine, who laughs at the fancy potty-whisperer title.

Although there are all sorts of websites and parent groups for diaper-free babies and elimination communication, Fontaine used common sense and her mom’s advice when her daughter Ava was just six months old to avoid diaper changing as much as possible.

It doesn’t take a Jedi mind for most parents to know when their baby is concentrating on a bowel movement. Urination is a bit trickier, but Fontaine had her daughter sit on a potty chair when she was fussy, or at logical times such as just before a nap, to get her accustomed to peeing in it. Sometimes just the colder air when the diaper came off helped her go.

Ava is two and almost potty trained. Getting to the bathroom and getting your pants off in time can be difficult at that age. Still, Fontaine can’t remember changing a poopy cloth diaper in the last six months, unless her daughter was sick.

Parents who practise elimination communication say you can pick up cues even in newborns. Although some cultures have used the diaperless method for generations, for convenience parents here often have their babies in cloth diapers and try to use fewer of them.

“You think it’s not going to work. You think ‘Oh you have to train them to do this’ but surprisingly enough they usually go,” Fontaine said.

“I just thought ‘Hey, this saves me from changing diapers.’”

Fontaine says pooping in a diaper is a learned behaviour that makes potty training later difficult and confusing for children. It would be like telling your child: “You can eat on the floor and just throw your food all over the place but then when you’re two I’m going to stick you in a high chair and tell you that you have to eat properly.”

By letting your child tell you when they need to go and taking them to a toilet or potty chair, you offer an alternative that is closer to what mom and dad are doing in the bathroom.

Kyrsten Burns, a mother of two, said it made potty training easier and her two-year-old son Emerson skipped the stage of wearing pull-up diapers and moved right into underwear.

Burns isn’t ready to try it with her nine-week-old girl because babies go so often, but it worked with Emerson as early as four months. Her son hated being wet and would cry before urinating. By the age of six months it was easy to tell by that faraway look on his face or a shiver that a bowel movement was on the way.

Burns said it’s easier when the baby can sit up. She put her son on the potty chair and made a whispering sound in his ear or turned on the tap to train him, although it’s really the parents who are trained to follow their baby’s cues.

She said at the beginning they were eliminating one poopy diaper and a couple of wet ones a day, which was a big motivating factor.

“The neat factor is definitely there, to have a kid under one sitting on a potty and using it,” Burns said.

It works more for stay-at-home moms and you do need extra time, but you decrease some dirty work and you don’t have a baby sitting in a mess, she said.

Websites such as diaperfreebaby.org have long lists of benefits, including a better-smelling baby, communicating with your baby, and reducing the risk of diaper rash and the amount of disposable diapers.

Margaret Deneau, owner of Sweetheart Baby Boutique in Windsor, invited Burns in to speak about elimination communication to other moms.

Deneau estimates the training could save about $1,000 a year in disposable diapers.

She has some potty whisperers who buy small potty chairs at her store, and other parents buying cloth diapers are often willing to try the technique by the time their child is eating solid foods.

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